And so the battle will now likely continue full-force into the 21st century: the long-time battle between D.C. Comics’ (started in 1934 as National Allied Publications) stable of superheroes and Marvel Comics (started in 1939 as Timely Publications) heroes. In the early 20th century Marvel was the marvel of comic franchises — so much so that The Walt Disney Company gobbled it up faster than you could say “Next Disney will gobble up Lucas Films..”
Why will battle now continue full force?
Because “Man of Steel,” the re-launching of D.C.’s venerable Superman had a monster opening with an estimated $113.1 million — beating surpassing the mark set in 2012 by Toy Story 3 ($110.3 million) and setting a new record for a June opening.
And now D.C. reportedly feels it may be onto something, The Wall Street Journal notes:
A blockbuster opening for “Man of Steel” this past weekend paves the way for Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros. to rev up its efforts to challenge Walt Disney Co.’s Marvel Entertainment in the superhero movie game.
Warner Bros.’ costly Superman reboot opened to an estimated $125.1 million, including $12 million from Thursday evening shows, in the U.S. and Canada, the second-biggest debut of the year behind Marvel’s “Iron Man 3.”
Note that trend. Look for Hollywood to try and do more films about superheroes.
Combined with $74.1 million from 24 overseas markets—most foreign countries will get “Man of Steel” in the coming weeks—”Man of Steel” had a strong enough start to leave studio executives already thinking about what more they can do with characters from their DC Comics unit.
“It’s more than just a franchise for us, it really opens up the door to do combinations of the DC Comics characters,” said Dan Fellman, Warner’s president of domestic distribution. “We can build them up like Marvel did and benefit from the history of DC.”
Warner is already in development on a sequel to “Man of Steel” and is expected to fast track that for release as soon as 2014, said knowledgeable people close to the studio. In addition, it has long been developing a “Justice League” team-up movie featuring characters such as the Flash and Wonder Woman that could come out as soon as 2015.
Though Warner Bros. had great success with director Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy of Batman films, it has otherwise lagged behind far behind Disney’s Marvel, which releases two superhero films a year and has had a consistent record of hits since 2008.
Warner and its corporate predecessors have owned DC Comics since the late 1960s, but lately the studio has struggled to bring a number of movie adaptations to production. Its one recent superhero movie not made by Mr. Nolan, 2011?s “Green Lantern,” was a major flop, earning $220 million world-wide.
Superman is without a doubt the world’s best known superhero — star of radio, a movie serial (where when the actor playing Superman started to fly Superman would morph into what was clearly an animated cartoon), superbly animated 1940s cartoons by Max Fleisher, the classic TV show with the endearing and ill-fated George Reeves (padded suit and all), and 1960s limited animation TV cartoons. Not to mention the 1970s-1980s movies with the also ill-fated Christopher Reeve — and an attempted 2006 reboot that largely flopped critically and at the box office since it seemed to offer little new in terms of its packaging and film content. A 1960s Broadway musical with a great score by the team that wrote the music and lyrics for “Bye Bye Birdie” flopped, but it was later done as a 1975 TV show — with the score and length altered, ending in poor reviews.
In the end, it’s all really about refreshing-up a charismatic character in a way that stylistically is accessible and pleasing to newer generations and those who have fond memories of earlier interpretations. Forbes:
The previous reluctance of the studio and film industry watchers to predict a big opening for Man of Steel is founded on a few things — most notably the combined negative impact of Superman Returns’ performance in 2006, and years of indifference toward the character from audiences and even fans. The franchise had collapsed beneath the weight of increasingly bad sequels by 1987, and it was nearly twenty years before a new Superman film hit theaters. By that time, it seemed the public and comic book fans had embraced the attitude that Superman was no longer relevant or relatable in a modern world.
Superman Returns did manage nearly $400 million at the box office, plus decent rentals and sales figures on the home entertainment market. However, those aren’t the sort of numbers expected for a franchise featuring probably the most recognizable superhero in the entire world, and the lingering perception is that the film is a mixed bag (despite mostly positive reviews). A planned sequel never materialized, and there was a sense that Superman Returns reflected part of the broad conceptual problem with the franchise — it was too rooted in the past, and out of touch with modern audience expectations and perspectives. Superman was so powerful, so alien, and such a messianic figure that not only did audiences find it hard to relate to him, but the character seemed unable to relate to us, either.
Still, the enduring survival of the character in pop culture and the modest but not insignificant box office of Superman Returns (which grossed more than 2005?s Batman Begins, for comparison) proved there was potential for a revival if the right ingredients and timing could be found. Was Warner willing to go through yet another long development trial and error to find that right mixture, as they had for so many years in the late-1990s and early 2000s? After all, hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent on one failed project after another, leading up to Superman Returns.
Batman had done well — but Marvel was doing far better with its films.
And so:
So it was quite lucky for WB that Nolan and Goyer came to the studio with an idea for rebooting Superman on film. At the time, they were working on the third Batman film in their trilogy, and everyone wondered if they could catch lightening in a bottle twice in a row and match or exceed the success of the previous Batman entry.
Actually, it was silly for anyone to even doubt it: this was to be another Batman movie from the same team, following up one of the most beloved and successful movies in history, and Nolan’s previous film (Inception) was an original movie concept with an extremely complex narrative that still managed to make more than $800 million. The Dark Knight Rises was destined to surpass that performance, so the only question was whether $1 billion would be in shooting distance, and by the third weekend the answer was obviously “yes.”
There is little doubt, then, that Christopher Nolan’s name is a major brand audiences trust and flock to. When you add in another name from the Dark Knight trilogy — David Goyer’s — then the potential for big success becomes even greater. So it was that when Nolan and Goyer approached WB with the Superman idea, Warner had to know they were going to eventually reap huge profits from The Dark Knight Rises when it came out while having already taken in enormous profits from Nolan’s other recent films, and so there was no other sane response but to approve the Nolan-Goyer Superman reboot project.
Superman finally had a team on board who had proven they could take a floundering franchise (remember the state of Batman when they took the reins back in the early 2000s) and turn it into box office gold. Their names alone brought instant credibility and at the very least inflated the likely opening weekend tally of any project they touched.
Read the rest of the long Forbes piece to learn how they turned the corner.
The Washington Post’s Comic Riffs blog:
And if that $113-million weekend total holds, ”MoS” will have the 18th-biggest opening ever, says Warner Bros., slotting in right behind “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” ($114.7-million).
Industry expectations predicted the film — starring Henry Cavill as the inheritor of the cape — would probably open close to $100-million.
The film, however, was showing a marked discrepancy between critical reviews and audience reaction. Metacritic, for instance, reported that the film had a lukewarm critical Metascore of “55” — but an average audience user-score of 8.6. (By comparison, the film’s predecessor, “Superman Returns” — starring Brandon Routh — had a strong Metascore of 72, but an average user-score of just 5.8.)
A “Man of Steel” sequel has already been greenlit, and DC — similar to Marvel’s strategic buildup to the biggest superher hit ever, 2012’s “The Avengers” — can now set its sights on a Justice League feature film with Cavill anchoring the cast.
Each time a version of Superman signs off — you know the franchise will be back.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.